Most hazardous waste incinerators in the United States
are owned and operated by manufacturing companies for their own use. Of
the 260 hazardous waste incinerators permitted by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), only fifteen are commercial incinerators, i.e
incinerators operated by a waste management company and available to anyone
who can pay their price. Commercial incinerators handle only a minute fraction
of the hazardous waste generated in this country. Nevertheless, they generate
problems, violations, fines and news stories far out of proportion to their
numbers and the percentage of wastes they handle. Nearby almost every commercial
hazardous waste incinerator there has formed a grass-roots environmental
group trying to close them down. The citizens complain of horrible odors,
of high incidence of disease, of explosions and spills, and of the indifference
state and federal environmental enforcement officials who tend to view
the public as the enemy. The subject of this paper is EPA's regulation
of these incinerators.

Commercial hazardous waste incinerators are extremely
profitable, so much so that there is a frenzied rush to build new ones
all over the country. This construction has been encouraged by EPA. The
hazardous waste management industry usually seeks out poor rural areas
with high unemployment rates for their facilities. However, because of
the dreadful reputation of these incinerators, grass-root environmental
movements have formed in communities to block new projects even at the
hint of one trying to locate there. For the most part, the grass-roots
opposition has been successful despite frequent vigorous promotion by federal
and state officials.

All too frequently this promotion has had corrupt overtones.
For example in Georgia, Governor Joe Frank Harris
and his Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, Leonard Ledbetter,
pushed very hard to get a commercial hazardous waste incinerator located
in Taylor County. When they left office in 1991, both Harris and Ledbetter
took high paying jobs with a firm that wants to build the incinerator.
In June of this year, a committee of the Georgia Hazardous Waste Management
Authority found that the siting of a facility in Taylor County was based
on politics rather than on environmental considerations and that the public
in Taylor county had been intimidated and prevented from participating
in the process. As a result, Governor Harris' decision to build an incinerator
in Taylor County was overturned.(1)

Another example was the federal EPA issuing a permit for
a commercial hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool,
Ohio, in an already heavily polluted area surrounded by homes and schools
and subject to frequent thermal inversions. (Behind the project is a consortium
of investors put together by Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, a golfing
partner of Dan Quayle and contributor of hundreds of thousands of dollars
to George Bush's presidential campaigns.) Local citizens found that the
permit originally issued by EPA was full of irregularities and outright
violations of the law.(2) Thus when the
incinerator operator asked for a permit modification to install new equipment,
EPA could have used the opportunity to re-issue the permit.

However, given the public mood, this was likely to result
in long delays, if not revocation of the permit. The incinerator operator
told the Ohio EPA that he couldn't "risk any appeals." The Ohio EPA agreed,
saying that "if there is a way to authorize this change without a formal
permit change, we should try to do so." EPA went along, and the EPA permitting
official said in his agency's defense that EPA "had to treat our constituents
[i.e. the incinerator operator] in a fair and equitable manner."(3)

The corruption involved in siting commercial hazardous
waste facilities by the largest waste management firm, Waste Management
Inc., was the subject of a recent report by the District Attorney of San
Diego County, California.(4) The report
says "[I]t is clear that Waste Management engages in practices designed
to gain undue influence over government officials. ... These practices
suggest an unseemly effort by Waste Management to manipulate local government
for its own business ends. If unchecked, these practices, like other more
direct forms of improper attempts to gain influence, may have a corrupting
impact on local government and lead to decisions unsuitable to the best
interests of the public." Furthermore, as shown in the East Liverpool,
Ohio, case, state and federal officials can be corrupted as well.(5)

The history of EPA's regulation of hazardous waste incinerators
does nothing to encourage anyone to want to live near one. In 1978, after
considerable internal debate (more on this later), EPA decided to regulate
hazardous waste incinerators through the use of operation standards alone.
What this means is that certain operating parameters inside the facility
are monitored, every fifteen minutes or so, often by computer. These parameters
includes the furnace temperature, the rate at which the waste is fed into
the furnace, the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the stack (which
indicates the efficiency of combustion), the electric current in the precipitator,
etc. If any of these parameters exceeds the range specified in the permit,
the computer makes a note of it. The facility is then supposed to shut
down and correct the problem.

In addition, a chemical and physical analysis of the waste
is supposed to be performed routinely in a manner specified in the permit
to see that the waste does not contain materials not included in the permit.
Records are supposed to be kept of this analysis and if discrepancies are
found it must be noted and the waste returned to the generator.

The theory that EPA operates under is that if these rules
are scrupulously followed, human health and the environment would be adequately
protected. This theory has been seriously questioned, for example in the
Greenpeace report Playing With Fire(6)
which demonstrates that even if EPA's theoretical assumptions are all realized,
there are still a great deal of toxic air emissions to be concerned about.

A second category of concern is whether it is technologically
feasible to achieve the operating conditions that EPA postulates. For example,
EPA scientists have recently admitted that modern hazardous waste incinerators
simply cannot achieve the 99.99% DRE (destruction/removal
efficiency) required by federal law.(7)

However, another issue which I would like to address at
some length is; what are the prospects that these rules will be scrupulously
followed or that if they aren't followed, EPA will take action? It should
be obvious that with the rules set up by EPA it is rather easy to cheat.
The operator of the incinerator produces and maintains most of the records
which can show whether or not he is breaking the law. (This is analogous
to writing our own W2 Forms and all the records that go with our income
tax returns.) It is impossible for anyone outside the plant to check up
on it. They may see dark plumes coming out of the stack, they may smell
horrible odors which make them sick, their eyes may burn, there may be
increases in respiratory diseases and cancer rates, the paint may peel
from their houses, but none of that is a violation of the standards. For
the most part, only the records kept by the operator or observations made
by an EPA or state inspector can prove that the facility is in violation.

I've talked to many people who live near hazardous waste
incinerators and I have reviewed many records and this is the way it really
works. Inspectors typically work from nine to five Monday through Friday.
So if the incinerator has anything particularly nasty to burn it will do
so at night or on weekends. When the complaints come in to the inspector's
office the next day, he will call the incinerator operator and ask him
what's going on. He may also visit the plant, but rarely finds any violations.
The enforcement officials tend to view the incinerator operator as their
client and the public as a nuisance.

I have illustrated this in the chronology below from actual
records of the Kentucky Division of Air Pollution Control for the LWD incinerator
in Calvert City. These records were collected by Mrs. Corinne Whitehead
of the Coalition for Health Concern.

May 30, 1986. Mrs. Bernett Dossett complained
that "Company is burning something after 3 am which causes an odor like
a skunk dipped in creosote and burned." The inspector states that since
no dates were specified in the complaint, no action was taken.

June 2, 1986. The inspector wrote of the
complaint from Mr. James Owen: "Odor was so bad on Saturday he could hardly
breathe. He drove around and decided odor was coming from LWD. Mostly in
morning but bad all day. He could not describe odor - just that it had
a sickening smell." The inspector went out to LWD on June 16. Her report
read: "Investigation of complaint about nauseating odor of 5-31-86. Both
units were in operation on day of complaint. Record review showed operating
temperatures for both units above the permitted limits. Operators log showed
no special problems for that day. ... No strong odors were detected."

June 20, 1986. Mr. Owen again called to
complain about smoke, odor, fumes, respiratory irritation, and reduced
visibility from the night before. A scheduled inspection made at 1 pm found
no serious problems.

June 24, 1986. Mr. Owen again complained
about odors from LWD. When the inspector came down from Paducah he found
no problem. Furthermore, he noted: "The plant has been inspected twice
in the last week and further inspection would be considered harassment."

November 11, 1986. Once again Mr. Owen
called about blue smoke and a sickening odor coming from LWD and once again
the inspector found nothing.

February 13, 1987. Bob Ivey from the nearby
B.F. Goodrich (BFG) plant called to complain about LWD. The report says:
"He is president of the union at BFG and has received numerous complaints
from employees at BFG about a sharp, burning odor from LWD which is causing
eye & throat irritation. Mr. Ivey said it smells like an acid."

The inspector came at 4:15 pm and found no problem.
He called Mr. Ivey at 4:55 pm and Mr. Ivey told him the odor had stopped
at 4:00 pm.

April 16, 1987. Mr. Owen called again
and again the inspector found nothing.

May 15, 1987. Mr. Owen called again. This
time the inspector issued a notice of violation for excess opacity of the
plume.

June 8, 1987. Mr. Owen called about odor
and smoke from LWD the previous week. No action was taken.

August 31, 1987. Mr. Owen called about
"bad odor from LWD today." The inspector's report states: "Today there
was a phenolic type odor present on the gravel road east of the facility.
No odor survey could be performed because of scentometer failure."

September 2, 1987. Sylvia Champion called
about LWD. The report says: "Mrs. Champion is concerned about emissions
from the accident which occurred recently. Was it only a brief flash fire
or did it burn longer. She heard that ... people felt a burning sensation
on their skin at the scene after the fire. Also she heard that the man
who had been burned had walked through some material on the ground just
2 days before the incident and his boots had caught on fire."

The inspector talked to the plant manager, Mr.
Trivedi. He told her there had been no fire or release of vapors and "Regarding
workers boots catching on fire, Mr. Trivedi is aware of no such instance."

September 8, 1987. James Owen called 9:40
am and Ken Simmen called at 10:50 am to complain about a bad odor coming
from LWD. The inspector showed up at 2:55 pm and found no significant problem.
Furthermore, his report states: "No odor survey was possible using a scentometer
because the winds were shifting and the odor from all the plants in Calvert
City are mixing together."

November 7. 1987. Don Siebert, Charlie
Doom and James Champion called the inspector at home on Saturday morning
to complain about the haze with "a very unusual odor" over the valley.
She arrived at the site at 12:20 pm and found nothing of significance.

In these two years covered, despite numerous complaints,
only one Notice of Violation was issued. Notice that in every instance
the inspector accepts the plant manager's word without question but any
claims by the public have to be proven or personally verified by the inspector.
The situation for the people living near the incinerator has not improved
over the years and is even worse today.

Despite widespread violations, it is rare for an enforcement
agency to issue a formal Notice of Violation and the consequence of issuing
one is usually nothing more than a promise by the operator not to do it
again. EPA's cumbersome enforcement procedure, is illustrated in the flow
chart in Figure 1. The system provides numerous avenues for the operator
to delay, procrastinate, negotiate, adjudicate and appeal for years and
years while he keeps on operating. Looking at this chart, it is easy to
understand why there is so little interest on the part of enforcement officials
for going through this maze.

EPA assures the public that an incinerator will be shut
down if it deviates from the operating conditions specified in the permit.
For example, in an EPA document meant to provide "answers to questions
that citizens may have about hazardous waste incineration"(8)
we find the following:

During operations, the permit requires continuous
monitoring of certain parameters (for example, combustion temperature)
to ensure that they are within the ranges specified by the permit. If parameters
deviate from these ranges, a sensor will trigger the automatic waste feed
shut-off system which is required in all permitted incinerators. The waste
feed will not resume until the required operating conditions have been
restored.

In real life the situation is very different. If serious
violations are found it does not follow that the incinerator will be shut
down or that the violations will even be quickly corrected. This is true
even if the violations are causing an increase in the risk to the health
of the people living nearby.

Take, for example, the hazardous waste facility in Sauget,
Illinois, owned by CWM (Chemical Waste Management Inc.), the hazardous
waste subsidiary of WMI (Waste Management Inc). CWM bought the facility,
known as Trade Winds Incineration in 1983. It had three hazardous waste
incinerators at the time and CWM added a fourth "state of the art" incinerator
in 1989. This facility, located in southern Illinois, accepts hazardous
waste from all over the country including wastes from as far away as Puerto
Rico, British Columbia and Tijuana. Sauget (which before 1967 was called
Monsanto) is located just two miles from East St. Louis, Illinois and St.
Louis, Missouri whch have a combined population of about a half million
people.

In January 1990 an explosion in a holding tank caused
the state and federal EPA to take a close look at the Sauget facility.
Among the deficiencies that they found was the fact that the new number
4 incinerator was operating at a temperature considerably below the temperature
at which it was required to operate. This meant that the DRE was considerably
below the much touted level of 99.99 percent. As a result, toxic pollutants
were being emitted into the air at a much greater rate than legally permitted.
Nevertheless, state and federal authorities have been trading communications
for two and a half years without correcting the problem while the people
of Sauget continued to be exposed to these illegal emissions. The following
is a chronology of correspondence from EPA to the facility(9).

January 1990. An explosion in a holding
tank alarms the state and federal EPA and causes them to take a close look
at the Sauget facility.

September 28, 1990. A letter from EPA
informs CWM of numerous violations which might lead EPA to stop shipping
Superfund wastes to its Sauget incinerator. Among the violations is the
fact that CWM has not made a chemical and physical analysis of the waste
before burning it and that "incinerator No. 4 has been operating 300 degrees
F below the permit required kiln temperature since January 1990." Thus
the public had been exposed to illegal toxic emissions for at least eight
months with the full knowledge of federal and state EPAs.December 7, 1990. Another letter from EPA informs
CWM that they have not corrected the problems pointed out in the September
28th letter. Meanwhile EPA continues to ship Superfund wastes to the facility
and the public continues to be exposed to the illegal toxic emissions.

December 28, 1990. A letter is sent to CWM stating
that "the U.S. EPA had made a final determination of unacceptability concerning
Incinerator #4". The letter also says that EPA urges CWM to enter a consent
agreement with EPA and the State of Illinois to resolve all of the violations.
Presumably EPA stopped shipping Superfund wastes to Incinerator No. 4 at
that point but other hazardous wastes continue going there and the public
continues to be exposed to the illegal toxic emissions(10).

January 28, 1991. EPA sends a letter to CWM informing
them of a new set of violations which would further threaten their ability
to accept Superfund wastes in the future. Meanwhile the public continues
to be exposed to the illegal toxic emissions from Incinerator No. 4.

February 4, 1991. Another letter from EPA informs
CWM that they have not resolved the issues raised in the letter of September
28, 1990. Meanwhile the public continues to be exposed to the illegal toxic
emissions.

April 11, 1991. EPA informs CWM that since the
issues raised in the letters of September 28, 1990 and January 28, 1991
have not been resolved, Superfund wastes will not be sent to Incinerators
No. 1, 2, or 3. Meanwhile the public continues to be exposed to the illegal
toxic emissions from non-Superfund hazardous waste.

August 13, 1991. Additional violations cause EPA
to issue another order banning Superfund wastes (which were already banned)
to the Sauget facility, but other hazardous wastes continue to be burned
under conditions which violate their permit and expose the public to the
illegal toxic emissions.

December 23, 1991. CWM signs a consent agreement
with the State of Illinois and, without admitting guilt, agrees to pay
a civil penalty of $1.9 million. The agreement stipulates, among other
things, that Incinerator No. 1 (which had been burning hazardous wastes
for over a decade) is unfit for burning hazardous waste and must be replaced
or upgraded. In addition, Incinerator No. 4, which had been operating at
300 degrees below its permitted temperature, must undergo a new series
of test burns to demonstrate that it can operate under the required conditions.
This process could take six months to a year; meanwhile the incinerator
would continue to operate and expose the public to the illegal toxic emissions.

December 24, 1991. Additional violations cause
EPA to issue still another order banning Superfund wastes to the Sauget
facility, but other hazardous wastes continue to be burned under conditions
which violate their permit and expose the public to the illegal toxic emissions.

July 2, 1992. As of this date the test burns required
in the consent agreement have not been carried out,(11)
and the facility is still in violation of its permit and the public continues
to be exposed to illegal toxic emissions.

A common violation, which is almost unenforceable, is the
failure to perform a chemical and physical analysis of the waste before
throwing it in the furnace. Incinerator permits are issued for specific
wastes only; however incinerator operators frequently take the waste generator's
word for what's in the waste. Keep in mind that hazardous waste is a factory's
garbage. If they typically ship out say a thousand gallons a month of waste
solvents and they find themselves with say fifty gallons of waste PCB which
they don't know what to do with, what is more natural than dumping it in
with the waste solvent to be hauled away to the incinerator? No one would
be the wiser. If the incinerator is not permitted to burn PCBs it means
it was not designed to destroy PCBs, therefore the community would be exposed
to illegal toxic emissions.

This problem is very common. For example in Kentucky,
Don Harker, former head of the state's waste management division, was fired
because he tried to revoke the permit of the previously mentioned LWD incinerator
at Calvert City. He said of LWD, "I don't know what LWD has burned. I don't
think LWD knows what it has burned. I don't think anyone does."(12)
In the inspection reports I reviewed from LWD, time after time, when there
were complaints about horrible odors, the inspector took the operator's
word for what was burned. Yet the operator himself doesn't know what he
is burning and doesn't even have the laboratory equipment or technical
staff to find out.

Every now and then a commercial hazardous waste incinerator
explodes. This happened in February 1991 to an incinerator operated by
Chemical Waste Management Inc. (CWM) in Chicago. This can only happen if
the waste is not analyzed. CWM was fined $3.75 million for violations at
their Chicago incinerator which included the failure to keep records on
what was being burned. An Illinois EPA spokesperson said: "It turned out
that they didn't really have a good idea of what all they had there. It
was woefully inadequate."(13) Yet these
inadequacies were not discovered until the incinerator blew up. Years of
routine inspections by state and federal officials had failed to uncover
them.

Not all illegal wastes burned in incinerators are the
result of a lack of attention on the part of the incinerator operator.
In some cases the operator will turn a blind eye and accept wastes he is
not permitted to accept if he knows it cannot harm his incinerator, regardless
of the affect it may have on the community. For example low level radioactive
wastes from nuclear weapons plants have been sent by DOE (Department of
Energy) contractors to commercial hazardous waste incinerators and landfills
all over the country(14) even though these
facilities are not permitted to accept radioactive waste. The biggest recipients
were the CWM landfill in Emelle, Alabama, the ENSCO incinerator in El Dorado,
Arkansas, and the Rollins incinerator in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.(15)
DOE contractor, Martin Marietta, not only knew that the wastes were radioactive
but took pains to eradicate that fact from the shipping papers. This practice
had been going on for six years before it was discovered in 1991.

In 1990, a special joint task force of the U.S. EPA and
the U.S. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) conducted
62 unannounced inspections of 20 hazardous waste incinerators.(16)
They found 75 violations of EPA regulations including numerous instances
where automatic safety devices had been bypassed, allowing toxic emissions
to escape into the atmosphere. Bear in mind that these violations were
found in the incinerator operator's own records. These facilities are inspected
many times a year by state and federal EPA inspectors who are supposed
to review those records. Yet at 20 facilities the task force was able to
find 75 serious violations which were not reported by the routine inspectors.

Why is the quality of inspection so bad? Inspectors are
typically poorly trained. They have low morale and high turnover. EPA statistics
show that 41% of RCRA inspectors have conducted ten or fewer inspections.(17)
There is no reward to inspectors for finding serious violations and indeed,
zealous inspectors are typically given a hard time by their supervisors.
Thus, they end up as "bean counters" while they look for other work. One
of the best places for enforcement officials to find good paying job opportunities
is with the facilities they regulate. It is common to find former state
and federal enforcement officials working for hazardous waste facility
operators. The hazardous waste management industry abounds with conflicts
of interest with their government regulators.(18)

What can be done to protect the public from the toxic
emissions from these incinerators? I have been in the regulatory business
a long time and I have always felt that regulators work best when they
are closely watched by the people they are supposed to be protecting. But
in the case of EPA's hazardous incinerator regulations, there is no way
for the public to check on the regulators or regulatees. To a large extent,
EPA rules are a lot like the constitution of the former Soviet Union, lots
of beautiful phrases with promises of all kinds of protection which somehow
never seem to happen.

I was chief of the Hazardous Waste Technology and Assessment
Branch from 1974 to 1978. After the passage of RCRA by Congress in 1976,
I was given responsibility for drafting regulations for hazardous waste
facilities, including incinerators. I believed that there had to be ways
for the people living near hazardous waste facilities to determine for
themselves, if necessary, whether their health was being threatened by
the facilities and that they should not be wholly dependent on regulatory
agencies to make that determination for them. I therefore pushed very hard
to have some sort of ambient air standard for toxic gases as well as an
odor standard.

Starting shortly after the passage of RCRA in 1976 until
September of 1978, an internal battle was waged over the use of odor and
ambient air standards. The opposition was led by EPA's Office of Air Quality
Planning and Standards (OAQPS), headed by Walter Barber, which has the
responsibility for writing regulations for toxic and hazardous air emissions.

The odor standards were the first to go. A memo from one
of my subordinates in January 1977 reports:

EPA did propose odor regulations but the upper
management vetoed them on the basis that odors are considered to be a local
problem. OAQPS did not believe that a correlation had been established
between odors and health effects.(19)

The reason for this opposition was, first and foremost, the
fact that EPA had been given the responsibility under the Clean Air Act
(CAA) to develop regulations for hazardous air pollutants but, with a few
exceptions, had failed to do so. At the time there were hazardous pollutant
standards only for asbestos, beryllium, mercury, vinyl chloride and lead,
hardly enough to protect public health from the thousands of toxic chemicals
emitted by a hazardous waste incinerator.

EPA had the authority under RCRA to develop air standards
for hazardous waste facilities and the mandate to write standards adequate
to protect human health and the environment. There is a provision in RCRA
which says that if other acts of Congress (such as the Clean Air Act or
the Clean Water Act) adequately regulate some aspects of the facility,
then they should take precedence over RCRA. However OAQPS turned this reasoning
on its head, saying that since EPA has not issued regulations for
toxic air pollutants (including standards for hazardous waste facilities)
under CAA it should not do so under RCRA.

Another reason for opposing ambient air standards, which
has some merit, was that if there were other sources of pollution in the
area you could not distinguish between them. However, I felt that this
was not sufficient reason for dispensing with ambient standards and, furthermore,
it could have the positive benefit of discouraging construction of incinerators
in areas which are already heavily polluted.

The argument was used that we would have to continuously
monitor the air for several hundred pollutants and that this was too costly
and impractical. This was a specious argument as we were only proposing
to monitor the pollutant on an as-needed basis. This is no different from
OSHA's enforcement of ambient air standards or from the enforcement of
highway speed limits, for that matter.

In the absence of standards developed by OAQPS we had
proposed basing ambient air standards on those developed by the Occupational
Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) for worker safety and replacing
them with OAQPS standards as they become available. There were several
hundred of these standards. However, this would have been very embarrassing
to the agency as it would have highlighted its shortcomings in implementing
the Clean Air Act.

In another 1977 memo, a representative of OAQPS derisively
refers to our proposed standards as "pseudo air standards," saying:

Establishment of pseudo air standards would cause
confusion with regard to non-waste related air quality goals and be a dangerous
precedent.(20)

In November my boss wrote to his boss:

Only five hazardous air pollutants have been
identified under the Clean Air Act. We feel that the number is inadequate
for hazardous waste facility emission standards and have proposed adding
[approximately] 200 OSHA standards. OAQPS doesn't want us to do that. A
crunch may come soon.(21)

In an April 1978, meeting OAQPS
warns once again of the potential embarrassment to the agency if hazardous
air standards are set (by our office) for hazardous waste facilities but
not (by OAQPS) for the much larger number of factories which emit toxic
fumes. One OAQPS representative says:

...establishing a limit for emissions from a
hazardous waste facility only, sets a dangerous precedent if it is not
done for chemical plants.

And in the samemeeting, his boss,
Walt Barber, warned that:

...the greatest conflict will arise when EPA
sanctions two approaches to establishing ambient air goals.(22)

The crunch my boss had predicted came in September when he
informed me that our own assistant administrator, Tom Jorling, who had
previously favored the ambient air standards for hazardous waste facilities,
turned around and killed them.(23) He also
butchered most of the other regulations we had been working on.(24)
I did not accept this gracefully and a few days later I was transferred.(25)
Thus began my career as a whistleblower.

In 1978 OAQPS had written only five hazardous air pollutant
standards. By 1990 the number was up to eight. Congress, in its frustration
with EPA's pace, removed the responsibility from EPA and defined 189 hazardous
air pollutants in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. Congress then gave
EPA ten years to issue emission standards for industries emitting these
pollutants, including hazardous waste incinerators. However, hazardous
waste incinerators are at the bottom of EPA's priority list and considering
EPA's track record it is doubtful that this deadline will be met in twenty
years.

In closing, there are several ironies (which may not be
appreciated by people living near hazardous waste incinerators) that followed
from all this:

In spite of the fact that OAQPS insisted that it is impossible
to develop ambient air standards to protect the general public, the workers
inside a hazardous waste incinerator facility are protected by ambient
air standards from OSHA.

If a hazardous waste facility is abandoned and becomes a
Superfund site, the general public is protected by ambient air standards
under EPA's Superfund regulations.

In 1981, EPA proposed ambient air standards in the Federal
Register for all hazardous waste management facilities. These regulations
spelled out in detail how the facility must carry out ambient air monitoring.(26)
This too was later killed.

Tom Jorling left EPA in 1983. He now heads the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation where he is frequently heard complaining
about the inadequacy of EPA regulations.

Several years after these events, Walt Barber left EPA to
become a vice president of Waste Management Inc., the parent company of
Chemical Waste Management Inc..

5. See also: William Sanjour, "Why
EPA Is Like It Is And What Can Be Done About It," Environmental Research
Foundation, February, 1992. Copies are available from the Environmental
Research Foundation, P.O. Box 73700, Washington, DC 20056-3700.

9. This chronology is based on correspondence
between David A. Ullrich, Director of the Waste Management Division in
the U.S. EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago to Chemical Waste Management,
Trade Winds Incineration Division, Sauget, Illinois.

10. In 1985, while on detail to the
Congressional Office of Technology Assesment, I did some research which
showed that clean-up wastes from Superfund sites were frequently being
shipped to EPA permitted RCRA facilities which were as bad or worse than
the Superfund sites. I did this in order to demonstrate the inadequacy
of EPA's RCRA regulations. EPA's reaction, however, was not to improve
RCRA, but to ban the shipment of Superfund wastes to inadequate RCRA facilities.

11. Private communication with Bill
Ingersol, an attorney with the Illinois EPA, July 2, 1992.

12. Private communication with Don
Harker.

13. Peter Shinkle, "Nuclear Plants
Sent Waste to Sites Across the Land," Baton Rouge State Times (August
14, 1991), p.1.

14. Shinkle, op. cit.

15. Testimony of Leo P. Duffy, Assistant
Secretary of the Department of Energy before the Committee of Interior
and Insular Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, February 20,
1992.

19. Memorandum from John Schaum to
The Record dated January 18, 1977 included in a letter from William Sanjour
to Terri Swearingen dated March 20, 1992, hereafter called Terri 92.

20. Memorandum from George Walsh,
OAQPS to William Sanjour, dated September 22, 1977. Included in Terri 92.

21. Memorandum from John Lehman to
Steffan Plehn dated November 18, 1977. Included in Terri 92.

22. Memorandum
from Timothy Fields to William Sanjour dated May 8, 1978. Included in Terri
92.

23. Memorandum from John Lehman to
Steffen Plehn dated September 5, 1978. Included in Terri 92. The stated
reason for Jorling's decision was that the "air modelling techniques are
not sufficiently developed to be legally defensible." However, our proposed
rule did not require air modeling. It only came into play when a facility
operator wanted to apply for a variance from using the best available technology.
Furthermore, air models are used in rulemaking throughout EPA.

24. See my testimony before the Senate
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Committee on Governmental
Affairs, August 1, 1979.

25. I filed a grievance protesting
the transfer and an EPA grievance examiner found that the transfer was
illegal.

26. 46 FR 11126. This proposed 1981
land disposal regulation was rather remarkable in several respects. First
because it contained ambient air monitoring standards applicable to all
hazardous waste facilities and second, because it admitted that EPA did
not know how to construct a landfill that worked and left it to the prospective
operator to prove to EPA that he could do so. Needless to say, industry
hated the proposed rule and it was never finalized.